Optimizing Cost Management for Your Data Warehouse Using Aggua

One of the fastest adoptions of technology has been that of cloud-based data warehouses. Organizations of all sizes quickly and easily embraced the power and use of platforms like BigQuery and Snowflake, without needing expensive IT operational teams to scale the platforms.

But while these are powerful tools, they do have certain limitations and drawbacks. The cost management factor is one of the major ones. If you aren't careful and hands-on in monitoring  your data processing costs in real time, you could spend a lot of money very, very, easily.

Sometimes a particular analysis is so vital that the cost of interpreting the data required isn't really an issue. However not all queries are optimized and can end up returning a huge amount of duplicate data. The result- increased costs.

The Cost Optimization Challenge

Data processing efforts can run into hundreds of millions of dollars for mid to large sized organizations. Even before the pandemic hit, many organizations had predicted the need for greater data investment. The pandemic exacerbated this need, but organizations have also had to deal with economic challenges brought on by the very same pandemic.

The solution to this catch-22 situation?

Experts have a not so surprising, yet often overlooked answer- better management of your data. According to Mckinsey Digital, enabling real-time visibility and standardization in data processing can recover as much as 35% of data spend.

Another point to remember is that cost management is not just about saving money- it's also ensuring that you are getting the maximum value from your data warehouse services. Knowing exactly how much time and money you are spending on each project allows you to prioritize those that have a higher ROI.

In order to effectively do this, you need a centralized cost optimization solution.

Enter Aggua – Centralizing All Your Data Workflow Costs in One Place

Most cloud-based data warehouse platforms offer native tools to manage costs, but generally these tools have only basic functionalities. Organizations have also largely found that these tools are just not sufficient to provide a holistic overview or control of their multi-cloud costs from a business (ROI) perspective. These tools also lack easy to use cost reporting modules.

Enter Aggua’s cost management solution that enables you to get the most out of your cloud spend. Here are its major features:

● Aggua’s cost management and optimization tool has been specifically developed for BigQuery and Snowflake, and has the ability to help you visualize, understand, manage, track, and report on unique granular costs

● It also allows data teams to understand and act on computing costs (job level) and storage costs (table)

● And all of this in real time- allowing data teams to stay on top of costs as they occur

● The tool is FinOps ready. FinOps enables organizations to derive maximum business value from the cloud by helping various teams- tech, finance and business- to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions

● Comes with a cost management reporting module to make it infinitely easier to share cost views, understand trends, and adhere to budgets

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Aggua is Built For Snowflake and BigQuery

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With all its power and capabilities, BigQuery simply does not provide the level of detail required to efficiently keep track of and manage a data team’s computing and storage costs. As we already mentioned Aggua’s cost management solution has some unique capabilities that empower BigQuery users: It provides users with the ability to track and report granular job costs at both individual job level, and storage costs at table level.

As a result, data teams are enabled with real-time information and a better understanding of their usage and its cost.

SnowFlake, on the other hand, has a resource monitor that allows tracking of cloud service usage and virtual warehouses. It also has the option to shut down a warehouse once it reaches its credit limits. However, if you need a more comprehensive solution, Aggua is where you turn to.

The Aggua solution will provide users with all the metadata required to compute how much storage a table has. It can also accurately ascertain how many bytes a table can hold, and hence provide you with an accurate computation of how much Snowflake will cost you per day, per month, and per year.

Such granular information and insights allow an organization to really begin optimizing costs.

Conclusion

Data processing costs can continue to explode and drain your data team budget- without providing any real value. With Aggua’s live cost management solution, these costs can quickly be surfaced and allow you to assess which processes and pipelines are truly driving value for your organization.